When did Tibetan celestial burial originate?

Tibetan celestial burial originated in the period of "Seven Kings in Heaven" in ancient Tibetan history (about 3rd-4th century BC). During this period, various beliefs centered on the worship of gods not only imprisoned the personal freedom of the seven kings, but also ruined their lives. This tragedy gave birth to the source of Tibetan celestial burial.

As an important part of Tibetan traditional culture, funeral culture presents its own unique and colorful style in content and form. From the formal structure, it is mainly composed of celestial burial, earth burial, stone burial, cliff burial, tower burial, physical burial and other funeral methods, which can be called one of the peculiar cultural phenomena of human beings. The reason for this style is not only influenced by the diversity of traditional culture, but also the geographical environment. Therefore, Tibetan funeral culture has become one of the most local cultural phenomena in Tibetan traditional culture. From this point of view, compared with other forms of Tibetan culture, Tibetan funeral culture can directly reflect the social customs, ideas, ideology and other aspects of Tibetan plateau people, and has high academic research value.

The appearance of Tibetan celestial burial is actually a long historical process. Because of its close relationship with the material civilization, spiritual civilization and geographical environment of the society at that time, coupled with many factors such as a long history and the passage of time, it is difficult for modern people to explore its origin. In order to have a historical and systematic understanding of the emergence of celestial burial, it is necessary for us to make a brief trace back to ancient Tibetan society.

The Tibetan ancient history "History among Columns" records: "The four clans, Dong, Dang, Sai and Mo, were the first humans to appear in the snowy area." These four clansmen can also be called four clansmen, but more accurately, "it should be' four surnames'. It can be seen that these four surnames or clans are of Tibetan descent.

After a long period of time, Tibetan history gradually got a clue and began to be systematic. "Since then, it has been ruled by nine Mashan brothers, 25 small countries, 12 small countries or 40 small countries in turn." (2) From these constantly changing rulers and the constantly differentiated and integrated social structure, we can see the historical process of the development of ancient Tibetan society, which also shows that the society at that time still belonged to primitive society.